A God I don’t fully trust
When I lack strength, self will and control. The urge to do right has left me and desire to love doesn't come easily. Once the stuffing has been squeezed from my seams and I'm flat on the floor, does God still care?
It is really easy too feel passionate and enthusiastic in youth. Read a book that makes you think you can change the world. Go to a concert and feel like the country could be different. Throw the bottle away and never leap to the bottom again. For a few weeks it will last. Be assured, boycotting and writing letters can be fun and lobbying parlament is a rush. One can even change the parts which sit in shadowed shame. For a season. Yet the endeavours began in faith fall short. Passion burns to apathy and anger. Goodness is suffocated by sickening sins. As for righteousness? Robbed by so many defeats.
The summer time is usually a significant time for Christian young people. Summer camps and events ignite these kid's hearts to the things of the Lord, to transform reality. Conferences that say there is no Trans-National so big that it can't be reached by the cries of the poor. Speakers who like to stand on platforms and say that a life lived in the light of God will count for something.
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- Sovereign over suffering
- Treasuring Jesus over sin
God doesn’t do ‘ordinary’
Yesterday I was driving down the Shepton Mallat for a youth conference. Soul Survivor is one of the largest Christian youth conferences in the country with something near 25,000 young people attending one of three conferences back to back. I was driving down representing Scripture Union to promote their devotional and bible study resources.
The trip takes around three hours, non-stop. Mumford & Sons were my musical accompaniment. Sigh No More is a great album, which everyone needs to own. The trip was going well (I hadn’t lost the other car of the convoy) when we stopped for coffee (Which we definitely didn’t organise via text message when behind the wheel). I was very depressed by my cup - they charged me £1.19 for a cup of Nescafé instant coffee!
So we pulled away from the service station and continued towards the next roundabout.
Then I noticed it.
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Ode to Christchurch or my first sermon online
This sunday was a very significant time of worship for me. It was the last time I would attend the sunday gathering at the church I was baptised in and am a member of, for a whole year. I am going to spend the next year in Baltimore, serving God's people there and hopefully discovering more of myself. It feels sad to go, and there is a gut-wrenching feeling of sorrow at all the faces I'm going to miss - but it is only for a short while.
Allow me to tell you the story of how I came to attend:
As a youth in school, there was a youthwork organisation which went in. They ran lunchtime clubs, and through them God began to awake my heart to himself. One of the volunteers attends the church and serves faithfully there. As I began to enquire about God, she invited me to attend the church. It was there that I began to grow in spiritual maturity and learn the ways of the Lord.
Over the years I have led sunday school classes, youth groups, preached, and served coffee at the bookshop. I am so thankful to God for all he has given me, and thankful to all the saints I have met there.
Below is the last sermon I preached at Christchurch on the first of August. It is based on Genesis 2, which I suggest you read before listening. There are a couple of hiccups in the recording, as the casette (yes, casette!) turned over. Oh, and at the end we spent some time in an interactive prayer activity which involved cutting out people. Just so you're aware.
Enjoy and let me know what you think!
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He who has ears
This week has gone well so far. Sorry about the lack of content for a week. I had an excuse: I was seeing friends around the country and also attending a stag do for a couple who are getting married next week (It's very exciting).
But I got back on sunday and haven't bothered to post anything new, which for all three of my readers is obviously devastating.
This week I have been having a great time at a local conference about the arts and worship. People far more creative than I have been exploring together how music, drama, art and dance can express the story of God. Yesterday was my favourite: Art.
I've posted a drawing I did some time ago here.
This new piece emerges from my reflections on Jesus' parable of the seeds. There is a great deal of insight contained in that story, but the phrase which caught my eye comes as some sort of a punchline:
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Mark 4:9)
Mysterious words. Riddles. What could that mean? Enjoy the picture, post a comment I'd love to hear from all three of you. Oh, and apologies for the poor quality image. I had to use my phone camera.
So, what does Jesus mean? 'Let he who has ears to hear, let him hear'
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Sovereign over suffering
Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? (Job 2:10)
Job is a really awkward story. If you've never read it, frankly I don't blame you. It's really long and somewhat tedious. Trust me on this: It's really awkward. When one reads the first part of the Old Testament, the Torah, one learns that when the people put their trust in God and walk in his ways, he will bless them. When the people turn from God he shall punish them. It's a pretty simple notion.
When we look through the pages of Job that theology is challenged. The premise of the story is this: Satan challenged God that Job only believes in him and worship him for all the blessings God has showered upon him. Indeed, Job is a very blessed man. He owns a lot of land, has a big family and is well respected. More importantly, he walks according to God's law. That means he gives to the poor, lends without demanding interest and is altogether loving to his neighbour.
So, Job is living a life pleasing to God and enjoys all the blessings associated with it. If you know Proverbs at all, you'll notice that Job is always quoting them, showing this man to be wise.
Anyway, in a rush of confusing and contradictory ideas, Satan is in the presence of God and God allows Satan to take everything away from Job. This raises several questions about God, namely: Isn't it a bit underhanded of God to use Satan to do his 'dirty work'. Additionally, one could ask is not God breaking his covenant with Job by cursing him when he should be receiving blessing? These and many other questions I shall ignore. I don't think that's where the text goes.
So, we are left with this awkward tension. Naturally, being me, I really enjoy Job.
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Treasuring Jesus over sin
I really want to sin.
No, I don't want to go out and shoot a person in the face or rob the last pennies from some poor old dear or even take advantage of the low prices abusive labour practices can provide.
But there's still plenty of bad things I still really would like to do. I mean I love that liberating feeling you get when you let all that venom you have stored up over a certain person come spewing out in a public place. Laughing and connecting with people often involves making crude jokes for a cheap laugh. Small price to pay for friendship, right? If we spend all night drinking, it's not a big deal because at least we're going to be friends!
Maybe if I get a girlfriend, I'd want to sleep with her under the guise of 'we're going to get married anyway'? Probably. Maybe. And I don't need to care about that friend who's life is falling to bits, because I've clearly got enough on my own plate without someones drug habit or drinking problem adding to the pile, you know?
Taking the time out to connect with God is always a struggle. It's not like I don't know the peace and joy and comfort available to me. It's not like I don't know that hearing from God will be to me the sweetest sound, the words of life. But I still don't want to do it.
I really want to sin. To separate myself from God and to dishonour his creation and to hurt my neighbour. The worst part is that I am very aware of the harm sin causes.
But that doesn't stop it's power.
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I am finally human
The starting point for humanity is in the embrace of God. According to the Bible, at least. I'm not too concerned to prove the truthfulness of the Bible, as I know there are many others who are far smarter than I and have written books on the matter. So, lest I be dragged kicking and screaming into the miry clay of philosophy and truth-claims and thought, I shall simply state that what is written here are my engagements with the message of the Scriptures. The God it declares, the truth about humanity it presents and the salvation it extends.
As I was saying: The starting point for humanity is in the embrace of God, so the story goes.
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The Exiled Church
The Old Testament story is dominated by two national events. The Exodus was the salvation of God's people from slavery in Egypt, bringing Israel into the promised land and making them distinct from all the other nations to be God's holy people. The second national event is far less positive.
The Exile dominates much of the Old Testament literature, explicitly in many of the Prophets and in the Psalms as well as the historical accounts of the tragic fall of God's people. The Exile forms the backdrop to the New Covenant inaugurated through Christ, a renewed relationship between God and his chosen people as stated by Jeremiah (31:31-34).
Now, the Exile occurred after generations of neglecting the law of God. After Solomon, many of the kings of both Israel and Judah are described as doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Usually the idol worship is chronicled, but this signifies the wider problem of disobedience. It must be remembered that for God's people, their religion and their social lives were indistinguishable.
So as God's people ceased to worship him, they lost their distintive character as a nation. They ceased to be the people God made them to be.
And so, after generations of unrepentant sin, God acts. Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon marches on Zion, the city of God, Jerusalem, and takes it. 'He carried away all Jerusalem and all the officials and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained, except the poorest people of the land' (2 Kings 24:14).
God was no longer there to shower favour and blessing upon his people, for they had turned from him! He was no longer their greatest treasure, so he was going to take away everything he had blessed them with, until they turned back to him, and knew he was their greatest gift of all.
I write this very brief history in order to introduce a concept in contemporary Theology. I study theology at a Bible College in the heart of England and so get the opportunity to hear the views of some of the top thinkers in the Christian church today. One popular notion is that the church today is in 'Exile'. In order to explain the dwindling presence of Christianity in the public conscience and marginalisation of the Church, people smarter than me look in the Bible and borrow this language of Exile to describe the current experience of God's people in the west.
The Church in Exile is the big idea.
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The Threshing Floor
I'm almost 1 month behind on my Bible in a year reading effort, and so in order to rectify this I have spent the last couple of hours ploughing through 1st Chronicles.
I almost thought I wouln't make it, after the early set-back of chapters 1-9, an arduous genealogy of practically everyone who ever lived. Well, that's an overstatement. It's pretty bad. Go read it.
Might help you get to sleep.
I quickly realised that the story in 1st Chronicles is almost an exact repetition of David's story in the books of Samuel. I then thought to myself 'Why oh why have I got to trawl through this again!' I promise I enjoyed the story the first time. In fact I spent a whole semester last year studying that story. It was awesome, one of my favourite courses.
But in order to catch up with my reading commitments, I marched on, tripping over the names I couldn't even pronounce in my head. I'm really glad I did, too.
Today, I made it all the way to 1st Chronicles 21. That might sound like an achievement, but frankly I sort of glossed over a fair amount of the story. Troop lists and numbers of victories and defeats are kind of hard to concentrate on. But this chapter arrested my attention.
In this chapter, David calls a census. This counting of the people is a sign of David's pride. Presuming he will be free from worries and attacks, he counts all he has conquered and catalogues his victory, despite being told not to by his advisors:
“May the Lord add to his people a hundred times as many as they are! Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord's servants? Why then should my lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt for Israel?” (1 Chronicles 21:3)
David pridefully and presumptuously acts without God's instruction, listening instead to Satan (1 Chron 21:1). Satan is the enemy of God's people, but despite King David, their ruler, being corrupted in this way, God did not abandon his people but disciplined them (1 Chron 21:7). Even though David was not tuned in to God, the Lord reached out to David through the people. And God's message to David is one of the most interesting things I've seen in this story.
The Lord is not willing to allow Satan to reign over David's heart, though we are told that he listened to Satan when he issued the census. God presents David an offer. Justice must be done, and God is concerned to rectify David's arrogance and presumptuousness. Yet he still gives David a choice.
‘Choose what you will: either three years of famine, or three months of devastation by your foes while the sword of your enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of the Lord, pestilence on the land, with the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.’ (1 Chronicles 21:11-12)
Some choice, right?
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- God doesn’t do ‘ordinary’
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Breakfast with Jesus
This morning I had breakfast with a dead man,
Well, they said he was dead
But he looked alive when he grilled the fish
On the beach fire
I ate with a man who had been beaten mercilessly
And abused by the state
Rejected by the crowds
He offered me some fish
The man I had walked out on, denied
In his greatest time of need
No one was left
And he died
The same old Jesus stood on the beach
And suddenly I was the dead man
Forsaken and alone
A heavy heart os despair
And I can hardly chew, can't stomach the taste
That this dead-and-then-alive Jesus
Would care for me
When I gave up on him
This morning breakfast with the dead-and-then-alive man
(John 18:25-27, 21:1-23)
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- God doesn’t do ‘ordinary’
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